Google's clever solution to people sneaking a peek at your screen

Do you ever get that creepy feeling that someone is looking over your shoulder when you're using your smartphone? Google is coming up with a solution to the problem of people surreptitiously looking at your cell phone screen, and it's really clever.

Google's "electronic screen protector" can tell when more than one person is looking at a screen using artificial intelligence and the front camera. The gaze detection reportedly works in 2 milliseconds, and protects sensitive information on the screen by temporarily covering it up. This is exciting for those of us who feel uncomfortable reading private messages or using online banking in crowded places or on public transportation. Take a look at how it works in the demo video below:

The technology will be presented by two Google researchers, Hee Jung Ryu and Florian Schroff, at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference in California next week. Hopefully Google will bring this AI-based solution to Android sometime soon, but in the mean time, if you're concerned about smartphone privacy in public, there's an alternative. Privacy screen detectors, like these from 3M, allow you to see your screen when looking directly at it, but it blacks out the screen for others who are looking from an angle. They only cost about $15 on Amazon.

What do you think of Google's new technology? Is privacy a big concern for you when using your phone in public?